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Volume IV · Page 460
| for piracy where, going back centuries, the
offenders, regardless of nationality, were always tried in the arresting state
without any previous designation of tribunal. Military tribunals for years have tried and punished violators of the Rules of Land Warfare outlined in the Hague Convention, even though the Convention is silent on the subject of courts. The International Military Tribunal speaking to this subject said — |
"The law of war is to be found not only in treaties, but in the customs and practices of states which gradually obtained universal recognition, and from the general principles of justice applied by jurists and practiced by military courts." |
| All civilized nations have at times used
military courts. Who questions that Prussia during the Franco-Prussian war and
Germany during World War I and World War II utilized military courts to try
subjects of other nations charged with violating the rules and laws of war?
There is no authority which denies any belligerent nation jurisdiction over individuals in its actual custody charged with violation of international law. And if a single nation may legally take jurisdiction in such instances, with what more reason may a number of nations agree, in the interest of justice, to try alleged violations of the international code of war? In spite of all that has been said in this and other cases, no one would be so bold as to suggest that what occurred between Germany and Russia from June 1941 to May 1945 was anything but war, and, being war, that Russia would not have the right to try the alleged violators of the rules of war on her territory and against her people. And if Russia may do this alone, certainly she may concur with other nations who affirm that right. Thus, Russia's participation in the formulation of Control Council Law No. 10 is in accordance with every recognized principle of international law, and any attack on that participation is without legal support. The Tribunal also finds and concludes that Control Council Law No. 10 is not only in conformity with international law but is in itself a highly significant contribution to written international law. |
| International Law Applied to Individual Wrong-Doers |
| Defense counsel have urged that the responsibilities resulting from international law do not apply to individuals. It is a fallacy of no small proportion that international obligations can apply only to the abstract legal entities called states. Nations can act only through human beings, and when Germany signed, ratified, and promulgated the Hague and Geneva Conventions, she bound each one of her subjects to their observance. Many German publi- [...cations] |
